When it comes to memories you can’t pound out of your head with a mallet, few rival the staying power of that moment when we discover how babies are made.
For me, it was really a series of excruciating epiphanies in the span of a fifth-grade afternoon in 1967.
All of us girls marched down to the school basement carrying chunky social studies books we would use to hide our very own copies of the slender Johnson & Johnson booklet titled “Growing Up and Liking It.” We watched a short flick on the wonders of our impending womanhood focusing entirely on feminine hygiene products made by – and how’s this for coincidence? – Johnson & Johnson.
Oh, how eagerly I whipped out that booklet to show my mother. She was a nurse’s aide, and she just loved matter-of-fact discussions about bodily functions. She set the booklet on her lap, looked me in the eyes and said, “There’s something else you should know.”
I don’t recall the specifics of the talk that unraveled life as I knew it, except that Mom had to add, “One day you will like it.” I do remember the heat burning up my neck and setting my cheeks on fire. I also remember my eyes bugging out like marbles on a spring as I shrieked, “With Dad?” And I remember my father coming home from work and asking, “What’s wrong with Connie?” Mom whispered, and he chuckled, and that was the only time I got away with not speaking to my father at the dinner table.
Ann Hanson, a grandmother of seven who travels the country teaching sex education in faith and secular communities alike, calls stories like mine “cradle tapes,” which are the experiences from our youth that form our adult values. When it comes to making sense of the mischievous stirrings that bring our childhood to an end, parents play a starring role, she said – even if they never take the stage.
“Parents are primary sexual educators,” said Hanson, who is minister for sexuality education and justice for the United Church of Christ. “It’s communication that stays with you for a lifetime.”
If parents say nothing, or act horrified by questions, the message is clear: It’s not OK to talk about sex in our home.
Hanson’s question: “If you aren’t educating your child, who is? Experimentation is a dangerous way to learn.”
On this, Hanson has a lot in common with Ben Snyder. He’s a 30-year-old father of two and the student ministries director for CedarCreek Church’s three campuses in the Toledo, Ohio, area.
I first discovered Snyder in a Toledo Blade story about his church’s campaign titled “My God Made Sex,” which used billboards, commercials and a flashy website to promote two seminars for teens about sex and God. The message is a relentless drumbeat about how God will rain shame on you like volcanic ash if you don’t stay “pure” and wait until marriage to have sex.
It would be unfair to depict Snyder as a typical two-fisted warrior for intolerance. In our phone interview, he came across as a thoughtful and gentle man who wrestles with issues of human judgment even as he claims God’s certainty. After he declared homosexuality a “sexual immorality,” I asked him what he would say to gay and lesbian teenagers who feel bereft and abandoned by God because of his church’s teachings. His voice softened.
“If they feel certain they are homosexual, perhaps there is something else we’ve missed,” he said. “These things can be very divisive or misunderstood. For me, there are names and faces to this.”
Both Hanson and Snyder want parents to take the lead in sex education for their children. They also want young people to understand the spiritual ramifications of sex. The difference between their faith-based programs is that Snyder’s instructions stop at “no,” whereas Hanson wants kids to know how to protect themselves if they have sex. And she doesn’t want them to feel unworthy in the eyes of God when they do.
Education, she said, is a great deterrent. For pointers, she recommends parents visit Advocates for Youth.
“If you teach a child that sex is normal and healthy and even pleasurable, they are more likely to know when they are in a relationship that harms them,” she said. “And they are less likely to seek experimentation and sex at a young age.”
Remember, dear parents: When it comes to sex, you are your children’s primary teachers.
Even if you say nothing at all.
Connie Schultz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and essayist for Parade magazine.
Copyright 2010 Creators.com
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
After the election, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment. We’re presently working to find 1500 new monthly donors to Truthout before the end of the year.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy